A Question of Time

(Author's Note: Watching Waters Of Mars gave me the kick on the rump that I needed to FINALLY finish this chapter... now let's just hope I can keep that hole in my Writer's Block!)

It was night, the stars above Cardiff fighting to be seen through the light from the city below. Rachel and Gwen were running down the sidewalk, following the directions which Toshiko was giving them over their earpieces.

Something in Cardiff was sending off a very unique signal, alien in origin. Toshiko could track the thing, but couldn’t get a visual… so while Gwen and Rachel moved in from one side, Owen and Ianto tried to cut off any escape route the thing might have.

“Rachel-- diagonal right, towards the castle!” Toshiko instructed the two women. “Ianto, we’re about twenty seconds from contact, still no visual.”

“No heroics, we’ve got no idea what we’re dealing with,” Ianto reminded his team over the coms.

“Got it!” Tosh suddenly cried over the earpieces. “Got a visual. Male suspect, wearing a hoodie.”

Rachel and Gwen could see a man fitting that description running away from them. Putting on an extra burst of speed, Rachel pulled ahead of Gwen, narrowing the distance between herself and the suspect.

The chase led the two women through a darkened mall, which was just closing fro the night. As they turned a corner Owen and Ianto joined the group, Ianto managing to stay at Rachel’s side as Owen fell into step with Gwen.

Rachel reached forward and grabbed at the man’s jacket, only to have him slip out and kick at her, somehow managing to hit her hard enough to cause her to fall as a strange metal object fell out of the jacket’s pocket and landed on the ground.

“Ray, you alright?” Ianto asked, bending down to look at the young “woman”.

“You did it!” Tosh shounted over the earpieces. “You got it… Whatever it is, it’s right next to you.”

“You mean this thing?” Gwen asked, picking up the metal device which had fallen out of the pocket of the jacket.

The metal device had several flashing lights, and was shaped somewhat like a remote control for a TV, except it had one large button… before Ianto could think to tell her otherwise, Gwen’s human curiosity got the better of her and she pressed the button.

The moment she pressed the button, Gwen froze, her eyes glazing over she started off into the distance, her lips moving as if she was talking, but no noise came out… Then suddenly she was back, looking around in confusion and shaking a little, as if she’d just stepped in from the cold.

“Gwen?” Owen stepped forward, placing a hand on Gwen’s shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“I’ve just seen a ghost,” Gwen whispered.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The group was back at Torchwood, watching footage from a security camera in the hopes that it would explain what had happened to Gwen… but all it showed was Gwen standing there, the device in her hands.

“I don’t understand…” Gwen said as she paced back and forth. “It was as real as this is. More real. I didn't just see that boy. I could ... I could hear what he was thinking, I could feel it. Like I was lost…”

“Intense emotion can be part of a neurological event. Hallucinations, dementia…” Owen trailed off as Gwen glared at him.

“I wasn't hallucinating, Owen. And I'm not bloody senile!” Gwen growled at the Doctor.

“You pushed this button which caused this apparition moment?” Rachel asked, picking up the device.

“Don’t you even think about it!” Ianto growled, taking the device from Rachel’s hands.

“Take away all my fun why don’t you…” Rachel grumbled.

“Your right though…” Gwen said as she gestured towards Rachel. “That's how it felt. Like an apparition. A ghost.

“Toshiko, where do we start?” Ianto asked, turning to look at his “Tech Goddess”.

“The guy you were chasing, I've got lots of CCTV, so tracking him down is gonna be easy,” Tosh suggested.

“What about the little boy?” Rachel asked. “You said there was a name on the card around the little boy's neck?”

“Flanagan. Tom Erasmus Flanagan,” Gwen replied.

“Unusual name, that'll help…” Tosh sighed, moving towards her computer. “I’ll run a full check. Births, marriages, deaths, criminal record, passports…. we'll find him.”

“Found him,” Rachel yawned, causing everyone to look at her. “Flanagan, Thomas Erasmus. 74 Brynaeron Terrace, Butetown…” Rachel smirked and held up a thick book. “He’s in the phonebook.”

“Gwen, Owen--- go check out our lost boy,” Ianto said, before turning towards Rachel and Toshiko. “You two Tech Goddesses are in charge of figuring out everything you can about this thing.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

A little less then an hour later, Gwen and Owen had returned with news of Tom Erasmus Flanagan…

“Tom Flanagan was evacuated during the war. Eight years old and he got off at the wrong station,” Gwen informed the Team.

“So what, a bit of him was just hanging around?” Owen sighed, running a hand through his hair.

“We’ll we’ve got an id on our friend with the alien machine in his pocket,” Ianto informed the team as he came down from his office and pulled up the man in question‘s rap sheet. “Sean Harris… aka Bernie. No idea what he’s doing with an alien device. Nineteen years old with a string of convictions… burglary, shoplifting, credit cards… ”

“The theft conviction…” Rachel chuckled as she read the sheet. “He was stealing tires off a car when the owner turns up and gives him so much grief that he apologizes. He starts to put the tires back on again and that’s when the police show up.“

“And here - shoplifting conviction. Bottle of vodka and three Pot Noodles?” Tosh fought to keep her from laughing.

“A criminal mastermind. Got anywhere with that mystery object?” Owen asked as he started to gravitate towards the arcade machine the Hub had acquired after it fell through the rift.

“Well it’s alien, of course ... Pretty standard nanotechnology, only looks good because it’s from the future or a more advanced society.” Rachel sighed.

“Well, you've really narrowed things down, haven't you?” Owen smirked and Rachel growled in warning.

“When I held it… it lit up and went mad,” Gwen remarked.

“But it’s not doing that now,” Ianto remarked. “So… where does this kid live?”

“Splott,” Tosh answered with a yawn.

“Splott?” Rachel blinked.

“I believe estate agents pronounce it ‘Sploe’.” Ianto shrugged before he tossed the SUV keys to Owen. “Owen, Gwen… go check it out.”

“We just went!” Owen protested as he caught the keys.

“Tosh and Rachel are still working on the device and I’m your boss. Therefore, you are going to Splott.” Ianto smirked at the grumble this earned him from Owen, while Gwen just shrugged and went along with it.

“Do you really think we can get anything…” Rachel trailed off suddenly, staring at the strange little device in silence for a few seconds… before she jumped out of her seat and dashed up the stairs to Ianto’s office.

Tosh looked over at Ianto for an explanation, but Ianto just shrugged and waited for the young woman to return to the main floor of the hub. In a few seconds Rachel came back down the stairs, her super computer in hand.

“Tosh, take a few pictures of the device,” Rachel ordered as she placed the laptop on an empty table and booted up the machine.

“What are we doing?” Tosh asked as she took a few quick pictures of the strange little device and handed the camera off to Rachel.

“Let me guess… calling the experts?” Ianto laughed, leaning forward as Rachel’s fingers flew across the keyboard, packing together all the information they had about the device.

“Need any more readings?” Tosh asked as she leaned over Rachel’s shoulders, looking at the information which Rachel was transferring into some sort of email program.

“I don’t think so… this should be enough for our ‘experts’ to identify.” Rachel sighed, adding a quick note of explanation to the top of the email before sending it off to the TARDIS.

“Who are we sending it to anyway?” Tosh asked as she sat back down at her desk.

“Friends of my Father, UNIT used to call them in for consultations. They like me… if they know what it is they’ll tell us,” Rachel yawned as she stretched, leaning back in her seat.

“How long will it take us to get an answer?” Tosh asked.

“Don’t know,” Rachel shrugged. “Gwen and Owen will probably get back and maybe we’ll have some more information.”

“Rachel, Tosh, stay here and monitor.” Ianto yawned as he stood up. “I’m going to meet up Gwen and Owen.”

“Going back to the railway station?” Tosh asked and Ianto nodded as he made his way out of the hub.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Rachel,” Ianto’s voice came over the com-link.

“What is it?” Rachel yawned, straightening out from the leaning position she’d adopted as she and Toshiko waited for news from either the Doctor or the rest of the team.

“Never got to the Railway station,” Ianto told Rachel and Toshiko. “The device activated again, this time Owen was holding it.”

“What happened?” Toshiko asked, pulling her keyboard closer to her and preparing to type out a first draft of an incident report.

“I saw a woman. She was running from someone. The man called her Lizzie Lewis, she called him Ed Morgan,” Owen’s voice was cold and there was the slightest hint of weakness in the Doctor’s voice. “He had a switchblade to her throat… and then they just vanished.”

“You think he killed her,” Rachel whispered over the com-link.

“She was… she was so scared!” Owen gasped. “I couldn’t… I couldn’t move! I couldn’t help her!”

“We’re on our way back to the Hub,” Ianto told Rachel and Toshiko.

“So the first time, it happens to Gwen. One little lost boy in a railway station whose now in his 70s and living in Butetown,” Rachel summarized. “Now it’s happened to Owen.”

“We didn’t just see it…” Gwen told Rachel. “We felt emotions that weren’t our own.”

“Toshiko, do you have anything yet?” Ianto asked Toshiko.

“Elizabeth Lewis, Lizzie. Only child of Mabel Ann Lewis of Hafod Street. Died March 29th, 1963...” Toshiko took a deep breath. “Raped and murdered on Penfro Street, under the bridge. Seventeen years old.

“He killed her,” Owen hissed.

“No one was brought to trial,” Rachel added.

“So what about Ed Morgan?” Owen asked.

“It's kind of a common name,” Toshiko sighed.

“We’re at the Hub, won’t be a second,” Ianto informed Toshiko and Rachel before he switched off his earpiece.

Rachel yawned and stretched a little, before moving back to check on her computer. As Ianto, Gwen, and Owen walked into the Hub, Rachel’s computer suddenly shouted, “You’ve Got Mail!”

Rachel quickly pulled up the email, while Ianto rushed over to stand beside Rachel, ‘accidentally’ blocking anyone else from looking at the screen. “They figured out what it is?” he asked, as Owen and Gwen walked over to stand next to Toshiko.

“Oh of course! It’s a sort of quantum transducer!” Rachel announced.

“Transducers convert energy from one form into another,” Toshiko explained. “They’re in all sorts of things, like headphones. They convert electrical signals into sound.”

“So this thing collects quantum energy, then converts and amplifies it,” Rachel smiled as she looked over the little machine.

“Into ghosts?” Gwen blinked.

“Sort of,” Rachel sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “This machine runs on emotion… human emotion is energy. You can’t always see it, or hear it, but you can feel it.”
Ianto sighed and tried to explain it so that his team would understand. “Ever had deja vu? Felt someone ‘walk over your grave?’ Ever felt someone behind you in an empty room? Well. There was. There always is.”

“Lingering emotions being mistaken for ghosts,” Toshiko realized.

“What else have we got on Lizzie Lewis, what else have we got?” Owen asked Toshiko.

“Owen, it was 1963...” Toshiko sighed. “The records aren't always that detailed.”

“What about newspapers?” Owen growled. “Witness statements, coroners' reports!”

“Owen!” Rachel shouted, whirling around to face the angry Doctor. “I know that you think you saw it happen… but you weren’t really there. You saw an echo of a moment, amplified by alien technology.”

“That won’t hold up in court,” Toshiko pointed out.

“Since when have we dealt with courts?!?” Owen screamed.

“Owen, Lizzie is dead and gone. No matter what you do, you can’t change facts,” Ianto told the younger man.. “Even a Doctor can‘t save everyone… you should go home and rest.”

“We’ll re-examine the evidence. If there’s anything that can be done, we’ll do it,” Rachel promised.

Owen stared at the young woman for a few seconds, before nodding slowly and walking away from the group, pausing only to gather up his things before he left the Hub.

“It’s late… we should probably all be getting home,” Ianto said, struggling not to yawn as he grabbed his coat and passed Rachel her backpack so she could pack up her computer.

“And here I thought you lived at the Hub!” Toshiko smiled as Rachel laughed and Gwen just blinked.

“I used to,” Ianto admitted, which caused the three women to start laughing. “Didn’t ever see a reason to get a real house… Have to be ready, the 21st century's when it all changes.” Ianto paused for a second. “And I hate to commute alone.”

“Where did you sleep?” Gwen asked, her mouth hanging open.

“I didn’t.” Ianto smirked. “Goodnight, Gwen, goodnight Toshiko.”

Ianto waited for Toshiko and Gwen to leave the Hub before he turned to Rachel. “Do you think Owen will be okay?”

“He’ll go over the evidence with a fine tooth comb,” Rachel shrugged. “He won’t rest until he’s gone through everything. If there’s evidence he’ll get it and run it through all the machines we have.”

“But is that a good or a bad thing?” Ianto sighed as he headed for the door.

“I don’t know…” Rachel sighed, handing the machine over to Ianto. “This thing scares me Ianto.”

“It scares me too,” Ianto admitted, kissing Rachel’s cheek gently.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The next day, Ianto and Rachel were woken up by the sound of Ianto’s phone going off.

“Who is it?” Rachel grumbled as Ianto fumbled for the phone.

“Owen,” Ianto replied, flipping the phone open and putting it on speakerphone. “What is it?”

“I went to see Ed Morgan,” Owen told his boss. “I didn’t talk to him… I just wanted to see who he was. But I found Bernie Harris.”

“Let me guess, you took him back to the Hub?” Rachel yawned and there was a second of shocked silence from Owen before he got his brain back together enough to answer her question.

“Yes… he found the tech in an old house. He’s been blackmailing people with things he’s seen.”

“Ed Morgan?” Ianto asked.

“Yes. But there’s more… I locked him up and went to look over the house where he found the tech… and I found another one.”

“So we’ve got two now?” Rachel yawned as she stood up and moved to get dressed, Ianto quietly doing the same thing.

“Not exactly… one’s different. They’re like two halves,” Owen told the two.

“Put it down on a desk, don’t touch it, don’t do anything with it until we get there,” Ianto ordered.

“Call Toshiko and Gwen!” Rachel added before Ianto turned off the phone.

When Rachel and Ianto got to the Hub, Toshiko was already there with Owen, looking over some boxes he’d brought back from the house were Bernie had found the device. Bernie was handcuffed to a chair nearby.

“Ianto, it’s all driftwood, washed in by the rift!” Toshiko smiled, holding up some alien coins. “Look at all these things!”

Rachel meanwhile, was looking down at the two machines. “We’re they like this when you found them?” She asked and Bernie flinched a little… causing Rachel to smirk. “You split them up… why?”

“I used it once… that half. I couldn’t use it again…” Bernie shivered.

“Why not?” Toshiko asked as Gwen walked into the Hub.

“I'm going to die. I've seen it happen, out there on the road. I'm just lying there, bleeding, and then I die. Just like I am now, not old.”

Rachel blinked, looking down at the little piece of tech. She suddenly laughed bitterly. “You saw the ‘future’ didn’t you?” She asked, raising one eyebrow as Toshiko, Gwen and Owen stared at her in confusion.

“What?!?” the three members of Torchwood asked, while Ianto just watched.

“Bernie used this half of the quantum transducer. He saw an emotional event that hasn’t happened yet… he saw his death,” Rachel sighed, picking up the half in question. “But by seeing this event you’ve already changed it.”

“What are you talking about?” Owen asked and Rachel turned to look at him.

“You can’t know the future. It’s changes too frequently,” Rachel placed the quantum transducer on the table. “What you saw was only one of many possible futures. What you saw might happen… but it just as easily might not,” Rachel smirked, whipping out her gun and pointing it at the two quantum transducers… and pulling the trigger.

Instantly, the quantum transducers were reduced to bits of metal and electronics. “Gwen, retcon Bernie… then everyone can leave,” Ianto said, moving to sweep the bits of scrap into a bin. “Owen, toss this into the incinerator, will you?”

Owen nodded and took the scraps of metal and tech, while Gwen injected Bernie with retcon. A few seconds later Bernie was sleeping off a “hangover” in a police cell, while the members of Torchwood headed home.

Ianto silently watched his team leave, before he turned to his mate. “Ray… what you said about the future, how much of that was you simplifying things for us dumb apes?”

“All of it… none of it,” Rachel sighed as she leaned on Ianto. “We don’t really know anymore. The rulers of time are gone.”

“What do your fathers think?” Ianto asked. “What did they tell you?”

“Certain moments in time are fixed,” Rachel’s voice seemed to shift as she remember her father’s words. “Everything else is in flux and anything can happen… but those moments have to stand.”

“Then the only problem is figuring out just what moments are fixed,” Ianto sighed as he walked out of Torchwood Three, Rachel at his side.

TBC